TL;DR -- Thanks for your support, FA was a success so far, I'm going to keep writing, I like feedback, there's a lot of challenges ahead of me.
A week after the publication of Fencing Academy, I feel I've been abandoned at some strange crossroads, each path heading in some dangerous yet wonderful direction. The one I am staring down leads to being a full-time writer. That is a delirious dream of mine; my screen name, Another Wannabe, pretty much embodied my self-assessment of becoming a professional.
The dream is still a little far off for me to be comfortable with. My book sold well for a first-time author (hitting Amazon ranking #20,000 or so) but unless I consistently perform that well, it's not really enough to live on, but it's a taste enough to keep going down the path, even if it's rocky for some time to come!
But here's an important fact to underline: anyone who takes this path never does it alone. In a plot twist worthy of M. Night Shyalaman: that means you. Yes you, take your hand out of your pants for a second, I'm being serious. It's not just about buying a book -- you could have bought a copy, told your friends to buy one, wrote up an Amazon review (BERST BERK EVAR!!!) and then, I dunno, cosplayed Lyza Dunwall (in drag, let's be honest!) and you would have made a great contribution -- but even people who read this blog casually still contribute. It's a grain of rice in the scheme of things, sure, but to paraphrase the Disney classic Mulan: even that can tip the balance!
So, to everyone who reads this blog, and especially to those who bought the book, and especially to those who took the time to write a review, this is a bit of a love letter to you. Figuratively, of course. I don't actually love love you, that'd be creepy. But really, honestly, thank you.
Here are the things I learned:
#1: Feedback is more valuable than money.
You need the latter to live, but you live for the former. If I had to pick between having a sale and getting a review, my heart says hands down the review, but my head says I need the sale to eat! It doesn't even matter that the review was good or bad -- any thoughtful examination that's fair or even critical is encouraging, it says this person took me seriously enough to take my work seriously. That's a great compliment even if I did otherwise sux ballz.
Posting on Literotica was a great way to get feedback. I miss it a little, I'm definitely going to write there more, not just to promote my commercial work but to get that ego stroke that everyone needs.
Finally, I've noticed something odd. I always thought that people were quicker to give feedback than pay for things, which is certainly true for me. Apparently it's the complete opposite! Only a tiny minority of those who bought the book actually wrote a review, just as only a fraction of the people who read this blog write comments. I think anyone who does anyone on the net wonders, "Who are these shadow people who look at all my stuff but don't say anything?" If you are a mysterious shadow person, inquiring minds want to know what you think!
#2: Managing expectations is really hard.
This naked ape is an optimist. Even after consciously telling myself, "Okay, really, you'll do well if you even sell 1,000 copies over a year," it did nothing to deflate wild fantasies of being #1 New York Times Best Seller. It's always good to aim high, but the risk is when you don't hit that bulls eye you chalk things up as a failure. Fencing Academy was, commercially, a success for what it was: a niche book by a first-time author, at a time where we're all drowning in self-published 23-page "novels" that cost almost as much. I'm happy with how it went, but only after some convincing.
(On a side-note, I now understand the annoyance with hack-writers. It's a little frustrating that your labor of love is as commercially viable as someone else's cynical cash-in!)
If I was Ash Ketchum before, entering this world with nothing but naive expectations of immediate success, I feel now I'm reentering the arena as Maximus Decimus Meridius, armed with a steely gaze and a fuller appreciation of how much hard work is front of me. Literal blood, sweat and tears were shed to make Fencing Academy a reality and there's going to be more to come!
In closing
I really hope you guys continue following me. Knowing even a handful of people are interested is incredibly encouraging, and I'll definitely need support/eyeballs if I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing far into the future. So... thanks!
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Thoughts on The Lost Hound by Palaverous
This is something that really should have come out weeks ago (what can I say, I am King of the Procrastinators!) but it's coming out now, so that's just how things are working out.
A couple of weeks ago, Palaverous released his first game, The Lost Hound. I, perhaps unreasonably so, utterly loved it. It had flaws that I know intellectually were poor design decisions, but the game struck a nostalgia bone in my body that made me either forgive them or actively enjoy them.
The reason why I like this game so much requires some explication. As a kid, my parents bought me a ton of Fighting Fantasy books, which, if you don't know, are like a D&D adventure in a book. A particular favorite of mine was the Island of the Undead, which I played pretty much obsessively, and when I actually started playing D&D with my friends I'd subject them to constant adaptations of said adventure.
Me: You wash up on an island.
Friend: Maybe an island... of the Undead?
Me: *groan*
When my family moved from my motherland of New Zealand ever-so-long-ago, I lost access to my beloved Fighting Fantasy books. For whatever reason, the books were scarce in the United States, so many years later, with the magic of the Internet, I still eat this stuff up. An illustration: one of the few phone apps I've ever paid for was Inkle's Sorcery series, and that's because my parents bought me only Part 4, ignorant that there were three other books in that wonderful series.
The Lost Hound just hits that spot in me exactly, except there's also sex, and well-written sex to boot, so Palaverous could write a game half as good as this and I'd still love it. That said, I think there's plenty here to love other than nostalgia, so I'm not saying that's the only good thing to the game.
My first playthrough was hilarious. I missed everything. The faerie, the tree house, the faerie queen, the monastery. Name an optional encounter, I missed it. Somehow, I stumbled into the fire world without landing on a single random encounter. I'm pretty sure this was obscene luck rather than a bug. I was really confused when I was getting crushed by fire elementals and the like.
My second playthrough I got the best ending. I really took my time, exploring and grinding like you really ought to. I bagged the faerie and her queen, and the succubus, Kimiko, and eventually Aura at the end. Getting the best ending was very rewarding and I really felt like I'd earned it.
The sex is pretty well distributed -- it comes as a steady reward for good exploration, you never lose interest from too little or too much, and every female interest has a different appeal. Aura is a great character -- vividly illustrated and just enough out of reach where you chase her like Pepe le Pew. I have a special weakness for bad ass ladies (which is why Taki was my favorite character from P:AF) so the fact she was at a demigoddess power level was only a plus for me.
I don't mind the random encounters, partly because they reminded me of the Fighting Fantasy books, except I would quibble at the level-up grindiness of it all. The point of the encounters in Fighting Fantasy books was to encourage resource management. Monsters didn't provide XP, a long encounter would just drain your stamina for the future, so it was better to avoid them if you could. Granting XP actively encourages players to find and hunt monsters... and in The Lost Hound, grinding is an absolute requirement if you want to get ahead. I don't like that, in these sorts of games exploration should be rewarded, not combat! So I would have preferred non-random encounters that could be avoided with intelligent play, and where your character becomes more powerful as they find items and powers, not levels.
I ended up enjoying the story, even knowing it was fantasy schlock. There are parts in Star Trek where they say technobabble that sounds vaguely scientific, like "We have to disable the fusion power cores or we'll have a resonance cascade scenario!", "But Captain, the fusion power cores helium coolants are at critical levels!" and my sense is that The Lost Hound does the same thing with magic. I don't have issues with this so much as I recognize it, and there's a lot of it. But the characters were enough to keep me interested even in the magic babble, and it just made enough sense where I could navigate it.
It was a little odd that the setting vacillated between straight fantasy and a Discworld-esque parody. I did find the God of Non-committal Good pretty fucking hilarious, I'll admit, and there's a lot of good humor and genuine laugh-out-loud moments that broke up the game. I'm of the opinion that a fantasy setting played totally straight is an unrealistic fantasy setting, since stupidly funny things happen in the real world all the time. That said, the humor didn't always mesh well with the straight-laced stuff, especially since the story touches on some serious themes of self-sacrifice.
The author calls his work "monumentally wordy". I don't really agree with this. Wordiness is something you get from bad prose, the feeling where your eyes start to glaze over because the writer is filling space with bullshit. Herman Melville is another author who is very, very wordy, but the man can write about gutting fish like it was poetry, so you don't care. I'm not saying Palaverous is on the same level as Herman Melville (fuck man, who is?), but like Herman Melville you don't get a sense the Palaverous is just trying to reach a certain word count. The only parts of the game I glazed over was some of the books, which really were short stories in and of themselves.
So... 10/10, and I demand a sequel!
A couple of weeks ago, Palaverous released his first game, The Lost Hound. I, perhaps unreasonably so, utterly loved it. It had flaws that I know intellectually were poor design decisions, but the game struck a nostalgia bone in my body that made me either forgive them or actively enjoy them.
The reason why I like this game so much requires some explication. As a kid, my parents bought me a ton of Fighting Fantasy books, which, if you don't know, are like a D&D adventure in a book. A particular favorite of mine was the Island of the Undead, which I played pretty much obsessively, and when I actually started playing D&D with my friends I'd subject them to constant adaptations of said adventure.
Me: You wash up on an island.
Friend: Maybe an island... of the Undead?
Me: *groan*
When my family moved from my motherland of New Zealand ever-so-long-ago, I lost access to my beloved Fighting Fantasy books. For whatever reason, the books were scarce in the United States, so many years later, with the magic of the Internet, I still eat this stuff up. An illustration: one of the few phone apps I've ever paid for was Inkle's Sorcery series, and that's because my parents bought me only Part 4, ignorant that there were three other books in that wonderful series.
The Lost Hound just hits that spot in me exactly, except there's also sex, and well-written sex to boot, so Palaverous could write a game half as good as this and I'd still love it. That said, I think there's plenty here to love other than nostalgia, so I'm not saying that's the only good thing to the game.
My first playthrough was hilarious. I missed everything. The faerie, the tree house, the faerie queen, the monastery. Name an optional encounter, I missed it. Somehow, I stumbled into the fire world without landing on a single random encounter. I'm pretty sure this was obscene luck rather than a bug. I was really confused when I was getting crushed by fire elementals and the like.
My second playthrough I got the best ending. I really took my time, exploring and grinding like you really ought to. I bagged the faerie and her queen, and the succubus, Kimiko, and eventually Aura at the end. Getting the best ending was very rewarding and I really felt like I'd earned it.
The sex is pretty well distributed -- it comes as a steady reward for good exploration, you never lose interest from too little or too much, and every female interest has a different appeal. Aura is a great character -- vividly illustrated and just enough out of reach where you chase her like Pepe le Pew. I have a special weakness for bad ass ladies (which is why Taki was my favorite character from P:AF) so the fact she was at a demigoddess power level was only a plus for me.
I don't mind the random encounters, partly because they reminded me of the Fighting Fantasy books, except I would quibble at the level-up grindiness of it all. The point of the encounters in Fighting Fantasy books was to encourage resource management. Monsters didn't provide XP, a long encounter would just drain your stamina for the future, so it was better to avoid them if you could. Granting XP actively encourages players to find and hunt monsters... and in The Lost Hound, grinding is an absolute requirement if you want to get ahead. I don't like that, in these sorts of games exploration should be rewarded, not combat! So I would have preferred non-random encounters that could be avoided with intelligent play, and where your character becomes more powerful as they find items and powers, not levels.
I ended up enjoying the story, even knowing it was fantasy schlock. There are parts in Star Trek where they say technobabble that sounds vaguely scientific, like "We have to disable the fusion power cores or we'll have a resonance cascade scenario!", "But Captain, the fusion power cores helium coolants are at critical levels!" and my sense is that The Lost Hound does the same thing with magic. I don't have issues with this so much as I recognize it, and there's a lot of it. But the characters were enough to keep me interested even in the magic babble, and it just made enough sense where I could navigate it.
It was a little odd that the setting vacillated between straight fantasy and a Discworld-esque parody. I did find the God of Non-committal Good pretty fucking hilarious, I'll admit, and there's a lot of good humor and genuine laugh-out-loud moments that broke up the game. I'm of the opinion that a fantasy setting played totally straight is an unrealistic fantasy setting, since stupidly funny things happen in the real world all the time. That said, the humor didn't always mesh well with the straight-laced stuff, especially since the story touches on some serious themes of self-sacrifice.
The author calls his work "monumentally wordy". I don't really agree with this. Wordiness is something you get from bad prose, the feeling where your eyes start to glaze over because the writer is filling space with bullshit. Herman Melville is another author who is very, very wordy, but the man can write about gutting fish like it was poetry, so you don't care. I'm not saying Palaverous is on the same level as Herman Melville (fuck man, who is?), but like Herman Melville you don't get a sense the Palaverous is just trying to reach a certain word count. The only parts of the game I glazed over was some of the books, which really were short stories in and of themselves.
So... 10/10, and I demand a sequel!
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Thank you so much!
While I was obsessively watching my Amazon Sales Rank yesterday, I learned that I was voted Best New Author of 2013! Thanks to everyone who voted, not just for me, but for anyone. I'm also honored that Bad Sister was the honorable mention (snicker) for Game of the Year of 2013. I'm not surprised that Pervert Action: Future won... that's very stiff competition, and I tip my hat to BBBen for that.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Tommorrow's the Big Day
It's so big I feel like I should be wearing a suit. My first book is out tomorrow, and I'm full of nerves.
You know, I don't mean to make a fuss, but here's a link to the book so sorry to bother you!
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Map Porn for Map Lovers (Hopefully Working Now)
...did I just say that? I meant, I admire fantasy maps, I admire all over them.
Take this one, for example, a map of the region where the Fencing Academy books take place.
Oh yeah, Zachon, damn you sexy. Your oxbow lakes have just the right curves!
And then here's a map of the whole continent.
Took me a while to make that one. It reminds me of South America, I think. This one is more of a draft, but it's pretty close to where I think everything will be.
In other news, I'm making an effort to cross post Blogger and made newly-made Tumblr you can find http://awfreyr.tumblr.com/.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
AIF Toolkit v1.0.2 + AIF Toolkit Recipe Book + The Concession Stand
AIF Toolkit version 1.0.2 is released. You can download it here. This is a pure documentation update (but what a documentation update it is!) so if you don't want all the extra documentation you don't have to download it. This was supposed to go up yesterday, but I stayed up late last night playing The Lost Hound. What a great game!
The AIF Toolkit finally includes a sample game: the Concession Stand. Now, the Concession Stand is a minicomp-sized game, but it's basically bad, and it's bad on purpose. My issue is with my sample games is that I had gotten these great, ambitious ideas, which of course fell apart, and the Concession Stand is basically a bare-bones AIF game that demonstrates some advanced features. I got incredibly lazy writing the sex scene, so there's that to look forward to. The only good thing about it is for a good read of the source code.
Also, the AIF Toolkit include the AIF Toolkit Recipe Book, an extension that is only documentation. It's a bit like a FAQ and a reference, and includes ways of how to implement a wide variety of features. As I get questions I'll probably add more to the AIF Toolkit Recipe Book. It also includes a project template and three sex scene templates. The sex scene templates were made systematically, I apologize in advance if they contain any errors and I'll fix them as I get reports or as I see them.
P.S. If you look at the right hand side bar, you'll notice that there's now a link to the latest release of the AIF Toolkit. That should make it so the newest release is always easily accessible.
The AIF Toolkit finally includes a sample game: the Concession Stand. Now, the Concession Stand is a minicomp-sized game, but it's basically bad, and it's bad on purpose. My issue is with my sample games is that I had gotten these great, ambitious ideas, which of course fell apart, and the Concession Stand is basically a bare-bones AIF game that demonstrates some advanced features. I got incredibly lazy writing the sex scene, so there's that to look forward to. The only good thing about it is for a good read of the source code.
Also, the AIF Toolkit include the AIF Toolkit Recipe Book, an extension that is only documentation. It's a bit like a FAQ and a reference, and includes ways of how to implement a wide variety of features. As I get questions I'll probably add more to the AIF Toolkit Recipe Book. It also includes a project template and three sex scene templates. The sex scene templates were made systematically, I apologize in advance if they contain any errors and I'll fix them as I get reports or as I see them.
P.S. If you look at the right hand side bar, you'll notice that there's now a link to the latest release of the AIF Toolkit. That should make it so the newest release is always easily accessible.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Quick March Update
It's 1/6 through the new year, and I still haven't figured out what my project of 2015 will be yet, though I've been playing around with a few ideas, I can't say I'm going to stick with them for certain, though there are a couple of options that I know I won't be doing.
Dextro: Professional Male Stripper
This came quite close to being the project of 2015, but I wasn't inspired enough by it. Instead, I've given the idea to a friend of mine (who I won't say, because I don't want to obligate him) who'll develop Dextro. I'm pretty interested to see what he's going to do with it, since he's pretty funny and more enthusiastic than I am about the game. I'm sure Dextro is in competent hands.
Soccer Story
Because of the complexity of the concept I've decided I really need a GUI to do Soccer Story right, and that means moving to a platform like Ren'py and getting artists and all that. I just don't have the management skills or flat-out skills to do that yet. I know a lot of people want to see Soccer Story, and I kind of want to as well, but I can't do it unless I get someone committed to A) do the graphics and B) do the programming. Everyone on the Internet knows: writers are cheap, but artists and programmers are pure gold.
At a bare minimum, to make the project doable:
Dextro: Professional Male Stripper
This came quite close to being the project of 2015, but I wasn't inspired enough by it. Instead, I've given the idea to a friend of mine (who I won't say, because I don't want to obligate him) who'll develop Dextro. I'm pretty interested to see what he's going to do with it, since he's pretty funny and more enthusiastic than I am about the game. I'm sure Dextro is in competent hands.
Soccer Story
Because of the complexity of the concept I've decided I really need a GUI to do Soccer Story right, and that means moving to a platform like Ren'py and getting artists and all that. I just don't have the management skills or flat-out skills to do that yet. I know a lot of people want to see Soccer Story, and I kind of want to as well, but I can't do it unless I get someone committed to A) do the graphics and B) do the programming. Everyone on the Internet knows: writers are cheap, but artists and programmers are pure gold.
At a bare minimum, to make the project doable:
- I'd need an artist to make an attractive GUI and character icons for each character.
- I'd need a coder that can write the engine and AI into Python (or whatever we'd end up using)
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